Cardiomegaly

You have a big heart,
said Dr Broadbent, turning
a compliment into a fatal condition.

Poem by Olive M Ritch, 2018.

Commentary

An unfortunate pun. A nice example of the confusions inherent in communicating with patients.

Orcadian poet, Olive M. Ritch has written a number of poems on medical themes, and is a course tutor for Aberdeen Medical School’s Creative Writing for Medical Students.

Further info

    • A Message (Scottish Poetry Library), a poem about dementia by Olive M Ritch was in the Hippocrates prize anthology 2011.
    • The featured image is from Postmortem pathology; a manual of the technic of post-mortem examinations and the interpretations to be drawn therefrom by HW Cattell (JB Lippincot Co, 1906), available from the Internet Archive (image on Flickr).
    • The adjacent image could be the X-ray leading to Dr Broadbent’s comment. Annotated image to show measurements by Dr Frank Gaillard on Radiopaedia.

Contributed by

Olive M Ritch

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